


Cold

by fightforyourwrite



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: X & Y | Pokemon X & Y Versions
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, References to Drugs, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 10:17:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7614172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightforyourwrite/pseuds/fightforyourwrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some hurts that will never heal and some ghosts that will never leave. A look at Emma's life before the events of Pokemon XY.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold

You can’t forget, can’t you? Even when your life changes for better, when there’s a roof over your head and three meals inside your stomach every day, you still remember.

You try to suppress the memories, you try as hard as you can.

You go over Looker’s arithmetic lessons. You practice reading. You go on walks with Mimi. You clean every inch of the Bureau to distract yourself.

But that’s not enough, you know it isn’t.

It’s hard to forget who you were before all of this happened. Before the streets even, before the part that everyone knows.

You tell everyone that you live on the Lumiose Streets, and you follow up on why by explaining where your parents are.

Gone. Just gone. You don’t elaborate because you don’t want to.

Somehow, ‘gone’ is an acceptable enough answer to rationalize a girl like you living on the streets. No ever asks for more.

Somehow, for a reason that you can’t even pinpoint, people trust you enough to believe you to believe that you’re telling the truth. Maybe it’s your eyes, those big and blue eyes of yours. You have your mom’s eyes.

It’s weird seeing yourself now, isn’t it? When you were too busy thinking about whether or not you would make it to the next day, you didn’t care. There wasn’t any room on the Lumiose streets for you to care about how you looked. But now, every time you look into a mirror, you see her, don’t you?

You look like her now; from your olive skin to your thick, wavy hair, to your thin nose.

It’s hard to forget her. It’s hard to forget your life with her before all of this; before the streets, before the Bureau, before Looker, before Serena.

There was good and bad, and you wish that you can only remember the good. It’s selfish maybe, perhaps in some people’s eyes, but it hurts less. Focusing on the good hurts less than remembering the rest of it. Not every memory you have has to be happy, that’s unrealistic, but not every one of them has to be sad.

You wish that you could remember just your mom tucking you into bed at night, singing lullabies to make your dreams as sweet as they can be. You wish that you can remember drawing random squiggles on paper with red and blue crayons and beaming as your mom puts them up on the wall.

But you can’t. There are some hurts that will never heal and some ghosts that will never leave.

You remember it. You remember dad, but those memories are fuzzy, because there are only two points in time where you could recall seeing him. Each incident is filled with yelling, fighting, screaming until the walls of the South Boulevard apartment start to shake.

You remember witnessing an argument between him and your mom through a crack in the bedroom door. You walked away because you didn’t know what to do, and because you were scared. What else could you have done? At the time, you were only 4.

You remember seeing him once on another occasion. He paid and visit to you and your mom one night.

After having a less than friendly argument with her, he turned to you and asked:

“Emma, you know who I am, don’t you?” 

That incident came a few years, you were now 7 and you responded:

And you said, “Yes.”

You were smart enough to know exactly who he was.

That was all you ever got about dad, but you were okay with it. Because dad never did anything good. If he wanted to, then he’d show you by being with you. He spent all of his time outside of the apartment, doing something that made your mom both angry and sad.

You remember seeing your mom in her lowest points of life. You remember hearing her cry at night through the walls of the apartment. You cowered under your sheets to block it out until you dozed off to sleep. You remember seeing her lie in bed all day, refusing the get up even when you asked her to. You remember watching mom open a plastic bottle filled with white, oval-shaped pills and popping two into her mouth every morning.

You remember waking up one morning when you were 8. You opened the door of your bedroom and stepped out into an empty apartment. Something about the place felt different. It was a day in winter, and the sun was barely up.

The apartment felt emptier, like something that had once been there was gone now. It felt cold.

With small steps, you walked through the hall and into the living room. She wasn’t there, it was empty as the atmosphere of the entire place. So you moved on to the other places where mom usually was.

Her bedroom was empty, as well as the bathroom.

You peeped into the kitchen and then you saw her there.

Your mom was lying on the floor. That same bottle that held the white oval pills was clutched in her hand, empty. She was still, unmoving. She wasn’t breathing, her chest didn’t rise and fall like it normally did. Her eyes were open, but they didn’t seem right. They looked barren, like something that had once filled them had left so suddenly.

You remember squeezing your mom’s hand and realizing how lifeless it felt. That sparkle in her eyes was gone, there was nothing inside those blue irises that used to be so vibrant and happy.

You remember reaching for the phone on the kitchen counter, (because you had seen mom do the same) and dialing a number. One hand has the phone and the other is holding hers. It’s starting to feel heavy, heavy and cold. Like a stone.

You remember the words you said to the person who picked up on the other end:

“Hi… My mom is on the floor. I don’t know what to do. She’s not moving… and she’s starting to get cold.”

**Author's Note:**

> Everything involving Emma just has to be sad, doesn't it? I love her, but every iteration of her involves something traumatic and sad. 
> 
> Why must the world keep hurting my fave?


End file.
